Debunking the myths about why Christmas is Dec. 25

Comments

I think we are making a simple thing complicated. The Roman Empire had gone
through the transition of persecuting Christians to acceptance to embracing
Christianity as the official religion. They also had many Pagan holidays, one
of which involving worshipping Saturn I believe which was December 25. I think
celebrating Christ's birth evolved from this holiday. Again, I wish we all
think this could be deeper but it was what it was...

Steve C. WarrenWEST VALLEY CITY, UT

Dec. 26, 2013 10:40 a.m.

Weston Jurney posted: Shepherds don't abide in fields keeping watch over
their flocks by night in the winter.

Average temperatures in the
Jerusalem/Bethlehem area are only a few degrees different in the months of
December, March and April.

BlueSalt Lake City, UT

Dec. 26, 2013 10:31 a.m.

Mr. Erickson has a well-deserved reputation as an ultra-right political
columnist. His tweets about the retirement of Justice David Souter and women in
general reveal that he's not only ultra-right, he's also not above
making outrageously offensive remarks better suited to a junior high bully.

He thinks God called him to become a commentator on CNN.

But
here's what's really galling - he basically cherry-picked sections
from the Wikipedia article on the pre-Christian holiday Sol Invictus and pasted
them into his article in an effort to convince people that December 25 really is
the historic birthday of Jesus.

The "evidence" he offers is
highly dubious (that's being charitable), and ignores abundant historical
evidence that pre-Christian Europeans did in fact celebrate the Winter Solstice
with lights, yule logs, singing, gift-giving, feasts and decorating evergreen
trees when the calendar in use at the time placed the solstice on the 25th of
each December.

And yet the Deseret News uncritically chose to publish
it.

Are you so insecure about this holiday that you have to publish
distortions to make you feel good about it?

RBBSandy, UT

Dec. 26, 2013 7:59 a.m.

The bigger question is who cares? Christians decided to celebrate the birth of
Christ and picked a day because they did not know on what day it actually
occurred. Does it really matter if the day they picked was also during the same
time frame as someone else used to celebrate something? Perhaps we should look
into the sinister background of "Law Day" - May 1, because many
socialist countries celebrate "May Day" - their workers' holiday,
on May 1.

Tyler DMeridian, ID

Dec. 25, 2013 3:48 p.m.

We have loads of historic evidence to the contrary, but the author proposes to
refute all that by referencing an agenda-packed religious book meant to
proselytize.

OHBUColumbus, OH

Dec. 25, 2013 2:11 p.m.

This article actually doesn't disprove the theory about Saturnalia at all.
Here are the facts the article establishes:

Christmas was celebrated
early on, perhaps by 200ADIt was being celebrated in December by 300AD

But the thing is Saturnalia was being celebrated the whole time. What
the article has established is that Christians started celebrating Christmas in
December about the same time that Constantine adopted Christianity. Nobody is
arguing that Christmas was entirely invented to supplant Saturnalia. On the
contrary, the argument is that is was already there and was placed on top of
Saturnalia to help ease the transition of the empire to Christianity. If
anything, the information in this article reinforces that theory. This is
consistent with other pagan/Christian blendings, such as the Sarcophagus of
Junius Bassus, as well as the consistent blending of Christ with Apollo, as well
as similar actions elsewhere, such as the merging of Yule with Christmas.

Weston JurneyWest Jordan, UT

Dec. 25, 2013 11:19 a.m.

Shepherds don't abide in fields keeping watch over their flocks by night in
the winter. That's what they have folds for. But ewes can't travel
in the spring, when Lambs are born.

george of the junglegoshen, UT

Dec. 25, 2013 10:00 a.m.

The difference between mortals and immortals is reason. The reason is , is
because you matter. You matter, That's the spirit of things. The name of
the spirit is Jesus who was a gift from God because he so loved the world. The
three gifts we can give and keep are your smile your heart and your word. All
the words don't mean any thing unless ya keep them It's what you do .
Thus the gifts for Christmas.